


9 109 9^9 910 



ss3a9N0D do Aawaan 



THE WAR AND 
WORLD OPIJ^^ION 

5v WILLIAM H.JOHNSON 

Professor of Latin in Denison Uiiiz'ersifi 




HOSPITAL OF LIERRE, BOMBARDED BY GERMANS, SEPT. 29, 1914 

"The ruins of churches, of hospitals, of the Louvain Library, and 
other places and objects held sacred from the ravages of war by all 
right-thinking men, picture not so vividly the crushing outward 
power of German 'efficiency' as its blighting inward devastation of the 
noblest traits of the German spirit itself, when actuated by ideals 
out of harmony with the upward trend of liberty and humanity." 
(Page 30.) 



PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

Gianville, Ohio 
1916 

PRICE, 15 CENTS 






Copyright, 1916, by William H. Johnson 
Published April 1, 1916 



Acknowledgment is made to THE NATION, 
New York City, for permission to reprint in these 
pages a few passages from its columns contributed 
thereto by the writer. 

The cut of the Hospital of Lierre, Belgium, 
which appears on the cover, is taken from Henri 
Davignons BELGIUM AND GERMANY, English edi- 
tion, page 4^. 

W. H. Johnson 



APR -7 1916 



FOREWORD 

The European war is no breakdown of Chris- 
tianity, as some have called it. With all its horrors, its 
progress has been a quickening influence to the faith of 
millions, however imperfect and misguided that faith 
may be in many who sincerely feel it, however adverse 
to Christian ideals the ambition that brought on the 
war, and however inconsistent with Christian teaching 
some of the hitherto unknown methods by which it has 
been waged 

Neither does it mark the breakdown of interna- 
tional civilization. Individual nations will continue 
to live in their individual capacity, and to make en- 
gagements with one another; and the necessity of hold- 
ing such agreements sacred will be all the more deeply 
felt because of the sad lesson which the violation of her 
Belgian agreements by Germany has taught to the 
world as to the intolerable results of such violations. 

Nor yet does the war signal the death of the move- 
ment towards arbitration as a substitute for war in the 
settlement of international difficulties, thus opening the 
way towards final disarmament. Outside the domina- 
tion of the Prussian school, represented in literature 
by the von Treitschkes and von Bernhardis, and in 
action by the German and Austrian governments, mili- 
tarism is a dying cause, and the billions now being 
spent by Russia, England, France and Italy, with the 
countless ship-loads of war munitions crossing the seas 
from this country, are all effective contributions to its 
death. 

Least of all is the war a gigantic "riot," as it has 
been called by William J. Bryan, who rivals Henry 
Ford among a certain class of peace advocates in his 
inability to realize the deeper world issues of the con- 
flict and to appreciate the true nature of the moral duty 



which it imposes upon the great American republic, — 
the duty to stand firmly at the head of the neutral 
world, at whatever cost, for those principles of liberty, 
justice, humanity and progress endangered by the war. 
For in its larger, worldwide meaning, the war is simply 
an attack, in the interest of Prussian dynastic ambitions, 
upon those principles of liberty, justice, humanity and 
progress which lie at the very foundations of Christian 
civilization. 

If there be excuse for another pamphlet on this 
war, it lies not in any authority attaching to the name 
of the writer, but only in his desire to keep vigorously 
alive for future use that intense interest and splendid 
moral feeling which burst forth so spontaneously at 
the outbreak of the war, for the perishing of this would 
be the one thing capable of turning the struggle into 
an unmitigated calamity, no matter which side should 
emerge with external success. 

W. H. Johnson. 
Granville, Ohio, March 30, 191 6. 





©CI.A427748 



THE WAR AND WORLD OPINION 



I. The Immediate Reaction 

From an editorial in the New York Independent, 
of January 17, 1916, are taken the following words: 

"When the European War began, American reac- 
tion to the situation was instantaneous and tremendous. 
On every hand the remark was heard that American 
feeling had never been so nearly unanimous as it was in 
holding Germany blameworthy for the appalling catas- 
trophe." 

The memory of every reader will bear witness to 
the truth of this statement, and much might have been 
added to it without exaggeration. Attention might 
have been called to the fact that this tremendous reac- 
tion was notably moral in its character, lifting great 
masses of men to a moral height on the subject of inter- 
national rights and duties such as they had never before 
consciously occupied. And it might also have been 
stated that this uplifting moral thrill was not confined 
to the United States of America. Just as spontaneously 
it manifested itself throughout the neutral world, giv- 
ing birth to an aggregate of deeply felt and forcefully 
stated moral sentiment such as mankind had never pre- 
viously beheld. One cannot attempt by quotation, 
within the limits of these few pages, to convey any ade- 
quate idea of this world-wide flood of condemnatory 
judgment and feeling. It would be a matter of vol- 
umes, not of paragraphs, to give even a fairly repre- 
sentative selection from the columns of stern reproach 
which poured forth in many languages, from the 
presses of many lands, as a startled world realized just 
what was the meaning of Germany's action during 
those fateful days of July and the beginning of August, 
in the summer of 1914. 



11. Not a Verdict of Prejudice 

Germany could hardly have expected positive ap- 
proval of her course from the world outside, but she 
was not prepared for such unanimity and emphasis of 
condemnation. An immediate defence seemed to be 
called for, and the one hazarded in the hurry of the 
moment was very unfortunate in its bearing on her 
reputation either for sincerity or for good judgment. 
The world was told that it was allowing itself to be 
blinded by its own anti-German prejudice and by 
"British lies," the latter rendered easier by the fact that 
German access to outside news channels was at once 
impeded through the cutting of cables. Sober think- 
ing before speaking would hardly have permitted such 
an explanation. It was a plea doomed to failure both 
from its ignoring of facts and from its ruthless insult to 
the intelligence of the peoples to whom it was directed. 
For Germany thus to challenge the mental capacity 
of the neutral world to draw a fair and just conclusion 
from the events passing before its eyes was comparable 
only to the attitude of the man who goes staggering 
along the street insisting that everybody else is reeling 
drunk. 

In the United States, the largest of all the neutral 
countries and the one in which condemnation of the 
German position had perhaps the most emphatic and 
general expression, the charge of such an antecedent 
prejudice against Germany as to have swung public 
sentiment unreasoningly to the side of England is ab- 
surd. A fairly wide acquaintance with the trend of 
American newspaper literature during this generation 
can but prove to anyone that as between the two coun- 
tries in question expressions of prejudice against Eng- 
land have been far more numerous and more widely 
distributed than against Germany. But on either side 
such expressions of prejudice have been in general 
nothing but insincere ranting, indulged in for its sup- 
posed political effect upon certain classes of imperfect- 
ly Americanized voters. It has neither emanated from 

6 



nor influenced the bulk of thoughtful men and women 
who have determined the cast of American sentiment 
in the present crisis. Let him who alleges a dominant 
anti-German prejudice among us recall the hosts of 
Germans chosen to office by American voters annually 
all over our land and then say no more. No, we cannot 
oblige Germany by the admission that we are a nation 
of prejudiced mental incompetents, and so far as our 
opinions concerning the outbreak of the war are based 
upon British statements at all, those statements have 
only been strengthened by the accumulation of further 
evidence as the months have gone by. With ample time 
and opportunity to get her side before the world, un- 
touched by the British censor, Germany's appeal for a 
reversal of the verdict has been in vain. 
III. A Hopeless Conflict With International 
Civilization 
One sees varying opinions expressed as to the im- 
mediate cause of the war, but features of its conduct by 
Germany and her allies have left the question of cause 
in a position of comparative unimportance. The in- 
itial act of warfare was the forcible entrance of Ger- 
many into Belgian territory, the integrity and neutral- 
ity of which she was under specific pledge to protect, 
both by her own treaty engagements and by her par- 
ticipation in international guarantees to the same ef- 
fect. The insulting proposal was made to Belgium 
that she sit still and allow her territory to be used as 
the medium of a war upon her friends, the French, 
money payment to be made afterwards for material 
damage done in passing through. Rather than accept 
this vile stain upon her honor, she faced an inevitable 
temporary ruin and resisted with all the strength at 
her command. To the hot heads then in charge at Ber- 
lin, this may have seemed only a matter of a few days 
delay. To the outside world, the deep significance of 
this wanton destruction of Belgian neutrality was im- 
mediately apparent. The well informed were aware 
that a school of militarist statesmen and writers in Ger- 



many had been building up a theory that national am- 
bition need be troubled by no restraints aside from 
limits in the physical efficiency of the tools at its com- 
mand; or, in the simpler if more brutal words of the 
old maxim of lawlessness in all ages, Might makes 
Right. In the violation of Belgium was the over- 
whelming and unimpeachable evidence that the Kaiser 
and his associates had taken this emblem of lawlessness 
as their own, to back it up with the full strength of the 
greatest military establishment which any nation on 
earth had ever devised. Germany had defiantly de- 
clared her own arbitrary will to be superior not only 
to her own specific pledges of the past but to the whole 
structure of international law. Now any man who 
stops to think will realize at once that good faith in 
the keeping of treaties, and a rigid regard for the bind- 
ing force of international law, are the very foundation 
stones of international civilization. Let every other 
nation show the same disregard for these principles 
which Germany displayed in the violation of Belgium, 
and has been displaying in certain features of her sub- 
marine warfare, and international civilization would 
at once be set back into the chaos of the Middle Ages. 
And it is the realization of this truth, among those who 
really think the matter through, that accounts for the 
widespread feeling that a German victory in the pres- 
ent war would be a worldwide disaster, entirely apart 
from its relation to the countries immediately involved. 
For it would mean that international law would be re- 
written under the domination of a power to which any 
single one of its provisions would be a "mere scrap of 
paper" if at any time found to be in conflict with its 
own national ambitions. The individual state can exist 
only if the will of the individual citizen shall bend suf- 
ficiently to safeguard the interests of all. "But for cen- 
turies past," to quote from words used in a letter to 
The Nation a few months ago, "there has been coming 
into ever stronger life a state more comprehensive than 
any that ever before existed — the civilized world itself. 



Feeling its way slowly, it has built up a code of law 
based in principle on the fundamental postulates of 
justice and humanity, and in practice on the general 
consent of individual nations to submit to a few restric- 
tions on arbitrary power in return for a more orderly 
progress of civilization, which experience has shown 
to be well worth the sacrifice." 

And if a realization of these truths has implanted 
so widely in the neutral world the conviction that a 
German victory in the present state of the official Ger- 
man mind would be a world disaster, it has also im- 
planted in the minds and hearts of the nations against 
which Germany is fighting an attitude which makes a 
final German victory impossible. In the early months 
of the war there was much speculation as to the possi- 
bility of some one of the allies breaking the combina- 
tion and making a separate peace with Germany on the 
best terms possible, thus leaving Germany free for a 
virtually certain victory over the others. There has 
been some evidence that Germany herself had hopes 
of such an outcome. But on the day when Germany 
contemptuously repudiated her own treaty obligations 
by crushing Belgium, her power to make a separate 
peace with any of the Allies was also crushed beyond 
repair. Did '^military necessity," self-determined in 
the council chamber at Berlin, justify the sudden 
repudiation of treaty obligations to Belgium? If that 
be German logic and morality, then what would a 
separate treaty with Russia, or France, or England be 
worth in the face of some other self-determined "mili- 
tary necessity" which might arise at any moment after 
the rest of the Allies should be conquered? He must 
be blind indeed who cannot see why it is that any break 
between England, France and Russia is wholly out of 
the question. And Italy, the long hesitating member of 
the alliance, must be blind indeed if she does not see 
that any break in the combination would be ruinous to. 
her. And since the alliance cannot be broken, and the 
Allies possess an ample surplus of men and means 



finally to wear out the utmost efforts that even boasted 
German physical efficiency can bring to bear against 
them, the victory of the Allies is only a matter of time. 
A German victory against the forces which she had 
challenged was improbable enough in any case. When 
she began the struggle by defiantly flouting her own 
treaty obligations, that improbability became an im- 
possibility through her own action. It is the reasoned 
conviction of the world in general that no satisfactory 
human progress would be possible without a due regard 
on the part of all nations for the sacredness of inter- 
national obligations. Shake off from Germany the in- 
cubus of von Bernhardi militarists and Prussian dynas- 
tic ambitions and the same conviction will find ready 
acceptance with the Germans themselves. No nation 
can successfully stem the main trend of international 
progress. To quote from The Nation again, "For Ger- 
many to conquer now, in a struggle of this nature, 
would be merely to throw a temporary dam across the 
current of civilization, herself below. And with all 
her boasted efficiency she can mix no concrete for a 
dam of that kind which will not crumble disastrously 
over her head in the near future. It is in the very 
nature of modern civilization that in such a contest the 
arbitrary will of the recalcitrant nation must give way 
to the permanent good of all nations, which demands 
the sacredness of international law against any individ- 
ually determined 'military necessity' whatever." 

IV. An Unfruitful Frightfulness 
Lawlessness and inhumanity are twin brothers of 
the same ill-favored brood. The illicit raid into Bel- 
gium was stained — no, you cannot stain a thing that is 
all stain — was attended within a few days by the drop- 
ping of bombs from the air among the women and 
children and other non-combatants of the city of Ant- 
werp. The readers of these words are only too sadly 
aware of the similar senseless slaughter wrought by 
Zeppelin raids over the non-combatant population of 
Paris, London and other cities and towns, — senseless, 

10 



because no one of these raids, nor the whole of them, 
has brought the German arms one whit nearer even to 
a local victory within the area where innocent lives 
have been so brutally taken. Have not the Allies used 
air-craft for carrying bombs too, do you ask? Yes, but 
their aim has been consistently to strike at railway 
junctions, ammunition factories, depots of supplies, 
submarine and Zeppelin stations, and other spots of 
distinctively military character and importance. For 
this reason the killing of women and children by their 
bombs has been the rare exception, while in the Zeppe- 
lin raids of Germany over the territory of the Allies 
the number of women and children killed has regularly 
been far more than that of men. And this is entirely 
in harmony with theories deliberately taught by the 
type of militarist philosophers now dominant over the 
minds of those who are responsible for German policy. 
Make war on all the resources of your opponent, mental 
as well as material, they say, and make it as drastic and 
frightful as possible. Over this offensive dose is spread, 
the sugar coating of the claim that thus the opponent 
will be obliged the more quickly to give up, and so life 
will actually be saved in the end. To have believed 
this before the trial shows an amazing lack of insight 
into human nature; to believe it now betrays an even 
more astonishing lack of information. According to 
the stupid militarist psychology of Berlin, the demon- 
stration that any woman or child in any city or hamlet 
of England or France was liable to be blown to pieces 
by a bomb from the air should have led the non-com- 
batant population to an overwhelming demand for an 
end of the war, through submission to Germany. In 
strict accord with traits of human nature of which most 
thinking people outside of Germany are certainly 
aware, the Zeppelin brutalities simply stimulated en- 
listments in the Allied armies and deepened the deter- 
mination of the whole population, women and men 
alike, that nothing should be thought of short of push- 
ing the war to an absolute victory. Germany's intro- 

11 



duction of poisonous gases is but another illustration 
of her clash with the humane feeling and tendencies of 
modern civilization, tempered a little by the fact that 
the device has been used only against actual opponents 
in the field, but an essential reaction towards the bru- 
tality of a less enlightened age, all the same. And the 
official state of mind which could plan and order the 
Zeppelin raids upon women and children, and the use 
of poisonous gases, goes a long way to explain the cruel- 
ties wreaked upon the non-combatant population of 
Belgium. One is aware, of course, of the heated de- 
nials of these atrocities given out from Berlin; but the 
verdict which will count with the world at large is that 
which bears the signature of James Bryce, whose repu- 
tation for careful investigation and rigid honesty would 
no more have been questioned in Berlin or Vienna than 
in London or Boston, up to the time when the war 
began. It must be remembered that no verdict against 
Germany on the question of these atrocities was re- 
quired to save the honor of England, or of British 
troops. If the evidence had so indicated. Lord Bryce 
and his committee of investigation could have reported 
that the charges were not sustained without bringing 
any unpleasant results upon themselves, or any re- 
proach upon their country more formidable than that 
of too great a readiness to accept damaging accusations 
against their enemies. But after examining hundreds 
of witnesses, and throwing out large quantities of testi- 
mony that was uncorroborated, the committee was com- 
pelled to report that it had found ample and conclusive 
evidence of widespread atrocities of such a nature and 
under such official sanction as to remove them entirely 
from the category of the sporadic outrages unavoidable 
in any war, on either side. Lord Bryce's report, with 
a sadly large supplementary volume of the terrible evi- 
dence on which it is based, may be had through any 
book seller. To read it is a nerve-harrowing but tre- 
mendously impressive experience. Can any man or 
woman whose heart and soul and mind are not wholly 

12 



dominated by the ideals of Prussian militarism read it 
through without coming to the unalterable conviction 
that any treaty of peace which does not provide for the 
restoration of Belgian independence, with all possible 
material restitution from Germany, would be a travesty 
on justice, a dishonor to any nation participating in its 
negotiation or profiting by its provisions, and a fertile 
seed-bed for further war? By any conceivable success 
at arms in this struggle, what could Germany have 
gained which her truest minds would not one day be 
glad to exchange for the privilege of having the Bryce 
report removed from the world's libraries and irrev- 
ocably forgotten! It is not the truthful historian, how- 
ever — he is a mere recorder — but the men responsible 
for the conduct of the German government itself who 
have written this black page into the history of the 
Hohenzollern dynasty. As far as they are concerned, 
the judgment of the outside world says today, and will 
continue to say: 

"The moving finger writes ; and, having writ, 
Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit 
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line. 
Nor all your tears wash out one word of it." 

With the German people, as distinguished from the 
group about the Imperial head, the future will be more 
lenient. The stain of the ruin of Belgium was not of 
their planning, and although they have been led 
through the excitement of war into at least a formal 
approval of it, the outside world is charitable enough 
to believe that it could never have happened if the 
structure of the German government had been such as 
to stimulate an independent popular opinion and give 
it any effective means of control. One of the saddest 
features of the whole catastrophe is the spectacle of a 
great people, capable of the very highest mental and 
moral achievements, allowing its popular opinion to be 
fettered, drugged, and prostituted to the outworn mili- 
taristic ideals of a medieval minded dynasty. So un- 
natural a strain will yet produce a break. If there is a 

13 



future for Germany it is not for the reactionary empire 
of today, but for a free and self-governing German 
people, their Hohenzollern dynasty with its von Bern- 
hardi ideals and its philosophy of frightfulness thrown 
gladly into the ever accumulating dump-heap of the 
follies of the past. 

V. The Lusitania and Neutral Sea Rights 

The warnings given out before the last sailing of 
the Lusitania were nowhere seriously considered. The 
reason is simple. Even the horrors of Belgium had not 
convinced the world at large that the German war 
lords were capable of so black a crime as the torpedo- 
ing without warning of a great passenger steamer, 
known to be carrying hundreds of non-combatants, a 
goodly proportion of them women and children, and 
more than a hundred of them citizens of a country with 
which Germany was at peace. If a month before this 
occurred any American opponent of Germany had pub- 
licly asserted that the Kaiser and his advisers were 
capable of such a deed, the charge would have been 
resented as slanderous by nine-tenths of our Americans 
of German extraction. The news that so foul a deed 
had actually been done filled even so vigorous a pro- 
German as Herman Ridder with astonishment and dis- 
may, and for a brief time he trembled on the verge of 
a genuine Americanism, asserting that President Wil- 
son had but to speak and he and others of his class 
would stand by him to the utmost. If he had but held 
to these noble words, he could unquestionably have 
carried a large portion of our German-American ele- 
ment with him, the policy of Germany herself would 
have been materially altered, and his last days would 
have been brightened by the consciousness that he had 
rendered a real service to humanity, greatly reducing 
the probability of armed strife between the two coun- 
tries that so painfully distracted his allegiance. But 
maligner counsels prevailed, both with him and with 
others, and the crime of the Lusitania has been again 

14 



and again repeated, with no variation except in the 
number of non-combatants lawlessly and brutally slain. 
And what defence has Germany put forth for such 
action? Nothing whatever that does not readily re- 
duce to the utterly inadmissible claim that on the score 
of a self-determined "military necessity" she may set 
at naught the admitted principles of international law, 
based on the dictates of humanity, and at one stroke 
carry the methods of warfare back into the barbarism 
of the Middle Ages. And the right of one nation to do 
just that is what some misguided "pacifists," and other 
"American citizens" whose real heart allegiance cen- 
ters in Berlin, and still other grovelers after the votes of 
this second class, have been trying to persuade the 
President of the United States to concede! Short- 
sighted indeed is the "pacifist" who imagines that the 
settled peace for which everyone but the real militarist 
longs could be promoted by a concession which would 
immediately move the hands of the clock of humane 
progress straight back, and far back, toward the mili-^ 
tary methods of a past whose dominating influences 
neither knew nor cared for peace. It is hard to apply 
any more respectful name than maudlin nonsense to 
letters which are continually appearing in our papers 
alleging that the President, in the diplomatic contest 
with Germany growing out of her submarine policy, 
is contending for nothing more than the mere personal 
convenience of a class of foolhardy adventurers who 
would risk the peace and safety of their country from 
no higher motive than the mere spirit of bravado. To 
hurl such a charge at the six score Americans of all 
classes, of both sexes, and of all ages, who were slaugh- 
tered on the Lusitania, or at the American women and 
children of Italian birth who were done to death on 
their way back to their American homes on the Ancona, 
or at the American consular officer slain on his way to 
his official post on the Persia, — to call these people fool- 
hardly triflers with their country's peace and safety, is 
not merely false, but is brutally slanderous as well. 

15 



The man who can repeat such a charge, after giving 
any real thought to the immediate facts and to the his- 
tory of the international right involved, is in sore need 
of a tonic both to his intellect and to his morals. Presi- 
dent Wilson's letter to Senator Stone, asserting his in- 
vincible determination to stand firmly by the tradi- 
tional rights of neutral travelers on the high sea, may 
seem to some to bring danger of armed conflict. Such 
an outcome is of course within the limit of possibility; 
but on that score alone he is correct in the conviction 
that far more danger, both near and remote, would lie 
in the base surrender of those rights in the face of law- 
less threats. 

VI. Rewriting International Law 
But we are told by Germany and her apologists, 
as well as by a few abstract theorists whom the deeper 
moral issues of the present crisis in the world's history 
seem powerless to penetrate, that the invention of the 
submarine and the Zeppelin have so revolutionized 
warfare as ipso facto to annul existing laws of war. If 
the heretofore existing laws of war do not provide for 
the dropping of bombs from Zeppelins among women 
and babies, or for the destruction of merchant vessels 
from under water without the serious inconvenience of 
providing for preservation of the lives of non-combat- 
ants and neutrals who have the legal right to be on 
board, then the laws of war are manifestly defective 
and must be redrawn! And so Germany proposes to 
declare them annulled on her own motion, and to re- 
write them at once on lines in harmony with her own 
immediate desires. It should not be necessary to say 
to any reasonable person that the question whether an 
agreement between nations is outgrown or not can be 
decided only by those nations acting in concert, not by 
any one of them separately. If the law of nations con- 
cerning warfare is rewritten in any essential respect 
at the close of this war, it will be rewritten in accord- 
ance with the united judgment of the civilized nations 
of the world, not with the self-determined "military 

16 



necessities" of some one among them. The United 
States will have a large influence in that rewriting if 
it occurs, and for what ends shall that influence be 
used? To "make a place" for new inventions of de- 
struction which are hampered by present regulations 
devised for the safety of the lives of non-combatants? 
Who that knows the larger trend of modern times from 
barbarism towards humanity, from absolutism to- 
wards democracy, can imagine the United States play- 
ing such a role in a conclave of the nations? Who that 
has a mind and soul in harmony with that trend to- 
wards humanity could wish it to do so? No, the in- 
ternational law of the future, seeking to mitigate the 
horrors of war at every point possible and to pave the 
way for its final elimination, will sacrifice no existing 
human right whatever to submarine or Zeppelin or any 
new engine of destruction, but will confine them one 
and all to a bona fide defensive or offensive use against 
the armed forces and purely military agencies of the 
enemy. The kindlier instincts are too prevalent in the 
modern world, the democratic recognition of the value 
of the life of the ordinary citizen and his wife and 
children is too general, to admit of the substitution of 
*'schrecklichkeit" for humanity as the end towards 
which the customs of warfare must be developed. To 
this sentiment Bryan himself would at once give assent; 
but to the realization of such an aim the one thing ab- 
solutely necessary now is the loyal and vigorous support 
of the President in his resistance to the one nation 
which is today doing its best to force the world in the 
opposite direction. 

VII. England and Germany; A Moral Contrast 

The purely selfish motive which has led a small 
number in this country to lose sight of the enormity of 
German offenses against American lives, in their ex- 
citement over British naval operations which affect the 
price of American cotton, can be readily understood 
even if it cannot be respected. No one beyond the 

17 



reach of this selfish motive, however, should be 
thoughtless enough to assume any relation of equality, 
or even of essential resemblance, between British naval 
interference with a small portion of our commerce and 
German submarine assaults upon the lives of our citi- 
zens. The right to shut off supplies from an enemy as 
a means of war has in itself always been admitted, as 
has the right to declare articles to be "contraband of 
war" under certain not very rigidly defined conditions. 
To subject these rights to the same sharp limitations 
which have been thrown around matters afifecting non- 
combatant and neutral lives has in the nature of the case 
not been possible, and is perhaps not even theoretically 
desirable. "The theory of contraband is universally 
admitted; the application must vary more or less with 
circumstances which cannot be foreseen. The right to 
employ the blockade as a means of war is also admitted, 
with the qualification that it must be effective. Here 
again, exact definition is in the nature of the case im- 
possible, as conditions vary infinitely with the geo- 
graphical factors of the situation. If England has of- 
fended in this case, it has not been at all from a ruthless 
disregard of our rights, and a contempt for interna- 
tional law, but from going possibly a little too far in 
the loose construction of that law. And loose con- 
struction, whether in our own blockade operations dur- 
ing the Civil War or in our internal administration, 
has certainly never been considered a crime. England 
has gone to pains and expense never before paralleled 
in the history of warfare to protect American interests 
against loss through her blockade operations and her 
contraband orders, and in any case where she errs she 
stands ready to make the loss good when the claim shall 
have been proved through channels already existing. 
Under her blockade, our sea trade has rapidly reached 
an aggregate never before known. Germany, on the 
other hand, has ruthlessly slain between one and two 
hundred American citizens, going lawfully about their 
business, all of them non-combatants, many of them 

18 



women and children. This was no question whatever 
of a possibly allowable extension of any existing prin- 
ciple of international law, but a flat, brutal, and defiant 
refusal to be held by the plain mandates of that law. 
Neither is it an offence for which any amount of money 
can ever render a just satisfaction." [From letter of 
the present writer to The Nation, issue of January 27, 
1916.] 

It is hardly worth while to argue a moral question 
with anyone to whom the moral distinction between the 
two cases is not obvious and radical. Many good 
friends of the Wilson administration, however, feel 
that the Secretary of State inadvertently failed to real- 
ize the full meaning of that distinction in the much 
discussed note to Great Britain despatched some weeks 
after his accession to office. For as compared with the 
notes previously sent to Berlin, concerning the Lusi- 
tania outrage, the tone and wording of the note were 
of such a nature as easily to blur in the public con- 
sciousness, and as a matter of fact did so blur, the in- 
herent moral distinction between the two cases. It is 
of course wholly desirable that our government should 
keep a close watch for any overstepping of the reason- 
able limits of British action in Great Britain's attempt 
to shut off the introduction of supplies into Germany, 
and have the record in shape for the securing of finan- 
cial reparation wherever it can fairly be shown to be 
due. But to draw an accusation in terms so severe as 
to call forth unstinted praise from Bernhard Dernburg, 
the man whom popular sentiment and perhaps official 
suggestion sent from our country in protest against his 
shameless public defense of the Lusitania slaughter, 
was to lose sight of the fundamental moral relations of 
things and to stiffen Germany in her resistance to our 
just demands. It would be stupid to lose sight of the 
fact that it has all along been the plain policy of Berlin 
to dim the blood of American citizens slain by her law- 
defying submarines with the smoke of any friction 
which she can possibly stir up between us and Great 

19 



Britain. And the source of the money that moves the 
printing presses by which a great deal of this friction 
is stirred up is certainly no secret to anyone at this late 
date. It is very generally felt, too, that Secretary Lan- 
sing made a false step in his circular suggesting to the 
powers a change in existing international law concern- 
ing the defensive arming of merchant vessels. The 
antecedent possibility of securing a general agreement 
on such a matter while a great war was actually in 
progress was virtually nil, nor was it by any means cer- 
tain that sober second though in this or any other of 
the great civilized countries would regard the proposed 
change as essentially desirable. It has been praised 
hastily by certain newspapers as a means of safeguard- 
ing human life on the seas; its one outstanding effect 
has been to stiffen the determination of the one power 
whose course has brought about a hitherto excluded 
danger to human life on the seas. And by the stiffen- 
ing of that determination, the possibility of an armed 
clash between Germany and the United States, small 
though it may be with Wilson in the White House, was 
measurably increased. These one or two matters have 
given many grave concern lest Wilson himself should 
reverse his earlier policy and make concessions to the 
German position wholly inadmissible in the view of 
the bulk of his supporters, but the letter to Senator 
Stone has cleared away any reason for apprehension on 
that score. The American flag, representing in this 
case not American pride, or prestige, or selfishness, but 
the sacred rights of all neutrals, won by ages of struggle 
between a growing civilization and an expiring bar- 
barism, will not be lowered unless it is torn from the 
President's hands and trailed in the dust by renegade 
Americans themselves. Unfortunately we have those 
among us possessing all the technical qualifications for 
congressional membership who would be capable even 
of that; but recent occurrences have shown that public 
opinion can be depended upon to make short work of 
any such attempt. 

20 



VIII. Diplomacy Abused and Dishonored 

But the standing of Germany in American opinion 
has been harmed not alone by her fundamental assault 
upon the validity of international law, and her ruthless- 
ness in slaying American citizens on the high seas as 
a mere incident of warfare with a third party. Her 
catalogue of offenses on our own soil is a long one, and 
of a much more serious nature than some of our people 
seem to realize. Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, 
has been a frequent offender against any admissible 
theory of diplomatic decency and propriety. The war 
had scarcely begun when he entered upon a vigorous 
campaign through the newspaper press to sway the cur- 
rent of public opinion to the side of Germany. It need 
hardly be said that this was wholly beyond the bounds 
of his legitimate activity. Years before, we had asked 
for the recall of a British ambassador not for an appeal 
to public opinion but for a mere expression of his own 
opinion in a private letter which happened to get into 
print, with regard to a pending election. Our request 
was reasonable and was of course granted, with no in- 
terruption to the friendly relations between this coun- 
try and Great Britain. But Sackville-West's ofifense 
was the merest trifle in comparison with Bernstorfif's 
newspaper campaign, and the governments of the 
whole world would have taken it as a mere matter of 
course if these initial ofifenses had been followed by 
prompt and explicit notice to Germany that the of- 
fender was no longer acceptable. On any matter that 
afifects the relations of the two countries in any way, di- 
rectly or indirectly, an ambassador has but one legiti- 
mate channel through which to work, and that is com- 
posed of the officer or officers in whose control the 
foreign relations of the country have been legally 
placed. When a diplomatic officer goes outside this 
channel, there is at once room to suspect that his motive 
is to bring outside pressure to bear upon the officials 
with whom he has to deal. That BernstorfT has been 
trying to do just this, from start to finish, is a mere 

21 



statement of fact evident to anyone who has followed 
the course of events. While the country owes an 
enormous debt to President Wilson's patience in many 
things, there is too much reason to believe that his 
tolerance of the indecent course of BernstorfT has been 
a serious mistake. On the first of May, 191 5, the Ger- 
man embassy, with no consultation whatever with the 
President or Secretary of State, had advertisements in- 
serted in newspapers all over the country advising 
American citizens not to take passage in ships flying the 
British flag. Here again was an offense against diplo- 
matic decency which would have been very mildly 
punished by asking for his recall. These advertise- 
ments attracted little attention, because, as I have said 
before, the world was not yet aware that the German 
war lords had fallen far enough below the present 
standards of civilization to sink a great passenger ship 
without warning and with no provision for the safety 
of its passengers. In the first note to Germany after the 
sinking of the Lusitania, attention was called to the 
"surprising irregularity" of such advertisements issuing 
from the embassy without notice to our government, 
but if this surprising irregularity (outrageous inde- 
cency, in plain language) had been appropriately fol- 
lowed by a cabled request for Bernstorff's recall, by 
noon of the morning when the advertisements ap- 
peared, there would have been more than a gambling 
chance that the torpedoing of the Lusitania would 
never have occurred. Berlin would have been con- 
vinced that there was a point beyond which trifling 
with our honor could not go, and six days might have 
been sufficient to get into touch with the submarine 
officers assigned to the commission of that particular 
crime and cancel the bloody order with which they had 
been sent out. It is doubtful whether any country ever 
really consults the far reaching interests of peace and 
international comity by tolerating the continued pres- 
ence of intentional offenders against diplomatic and 
consular propriety. Such offenses usually mean that 

22 



the country in which they are committed is being em- 
ployed as a base of operations for some ulterior end, 
likely to produce friction with still other countries; 
and such is incontestably the case with the offenses com- 
mitted by the German and Austrian embassies, at- 
taches, and consular representatives. The sending 
home of Dumba, von Papen and Captain Boy-ed was 
all too light a penalty, and too long delayed to have 
the desired effect. The activities of some of these men 
have been incontestably proved to have been connected 
with a long series of outrageous crimes committed 
against American industries and American lives, in the 
interest of the German cause, while on the other hand 
these same men have been in intimate relation with 
Bernstorff himself and other direct representatives of 
the German government. That money has passed from 
the German government through the German embassy 
and on down into the hands of men now indelibly 
stained with participation in these crimes is shown by 
more than one line of evidence, as may be seen in the 
papers seized from von Papen at Falmouth. Let those 
who are practiced in exercising the philosopher's "will 
to believe" convince themselves if they can that the men 
at the top knew nothing of the criminal operations of 
some of the men who were handling this money at the 
bottom. Men at the top who would pass money down 
such a line without knowing precisely what use was to 
be made of it are not the men with whom we may v/ith 
safety and self-respect conduct our relations with any 
foreign power whatever. We are today dealing with 
one of the two great Teutonic powers through a man 
whose name stands beneath a letter proposing the false 
and illegal use of American passports, involving the 
deceiving of our own officials and the risk of reputa- 
tion for honest dealing with Great Britain, Russia, 
France and Italy, in order to get Austrian reservists 
home from this country. To an immediate request for 
his recall, when this letter was discovered, Austria 
could have penned no objection which she would not 

23 



have been ashamed to put upon the cables and allow 
the outside world to see. It must be remembered that 
the theory and practice of diplomacy have never ad- 
mitted the right of any country to force upon another 
diplomatic or consular representatives not entirely sat- 
isfactory to the government to which they are assigned. 
The mere statement that a given representative is 
persona non grata is all that is required to bring about 
a change. Diplomatic propriety does not require a 
reason for the fact, though one may be given if thought 
desirable, and to demand the reason when not given 
would be a breach of diplomatic propriety. That the 
President has stopped so far short of his unquestionable 
rights under diplomatic propriety and usage in these 
cases is a great proof of his patience, but it must be 
taken as no indication of lack of friendship and respect 
for him to ask the question whether patience in this 
matter has not been proved by events to have been a 
mistake. In the delicate situation produced by the war 
and our own official neutrality, just two theories as to 
the matter in question were possible, — one that we 
should be unusually lenient with the representatives of 
belligerent powers on our soil ; the other that we should 
insist from the outset upon the strictest observance by 
those representatives of every demand of diplomatic 
propriety. The first has been followed, and with what 
results? The continual disposition to take every ad- 
vantage of that patience; the serious dulling of our own 
ideas as to what diplomatic decency really requires, 
through constant familiarity with its opposite; the 
keeping open of an easy channel of communication be- 
tween one of the belligerent 8:overnments and agencies 
in this country whose activities have been at all times 
outrageously indecent and often still more outrageous- 
ly criminal; the consequent engendering of bad feeling 
which must long interfere with a desirable cordiality 
of our relations with more than one European nation 
in the years to come; the hampering of our attempts to 
come to a settlement of our difficulties with Germany 

24 



over the Lusitania matter, and the increased muddling 
of right ideas as to allegiance and patriotism among 
our foreign-born citizens. It would not be fair to abuse 
the President for not foreseeing all this. Who of us 
were sufficiently prepared beforehand for the many 
turns which events have taken since this war began? 
But it is certainly our duty to learn from experience, 
and is it not evident from experience that it would 
have been better to have insisted from the start upon 
the other theory, that the very delicacy of the situation 
required the most scrupulous regard for every demand 
of diplomatic propriety? Is it not altogether probable 
that the Central powers, faced early in the war with 
the necessity of recalling their ambassadors and a large 
list of men in lower positions, for offenses known to the 
whole world, would have conceived a far higher re- 
spect for America, and through her for all neutral 
powers? And would not that respect have produced 
a radical modification in her methods of carrying on 
the war, eliminating that feature of ruthless disregard 
for neutral lives and international obligations which 
has sown seeds of untold bitterness throughout the 
world and will react as a curse upon Germany herself 
for generations to come? It would be ungenerous not 
to say, in this connection, that the diplomatic and con- 
sular service of the Allies with almost no exception — 
none at all involving any high official — has been volun- 
tarily kept within the bounds of entire propriety. The 
past cannot be recalled ; but it is not too late now to 
insist that the honor and dignity of this country and the 
decencies of diplomatic usage must be respected by any 
who are to continue in diplomatic or consular service 
within our borders. 

IX. German Contempt for American Intelligence 
To neutral countries a very irritating phase of the 
war has been Germany's persistent underrating of their 
intelligence, her persistent assumption that they could 
be led to accept statements wholly out of accord with 
facts open to all, and logic so faulty as hardly to deceive 

25 



an intelligent child, much less an educated and intelli- 
gent man. The flourish of documents rifled from the 
public archives of Belgium is a case in point, with the 
claim that they proved Belgium guilty of betraying her 
own neutrality long before the war began, when any 
careful reader could see at once that they convicted 
Belgium of no impropriety whatever, but merely of 
sufficient foresight to suspect the crime which Germany 
was so soon to commit against her and make some pro- 
vision for protection when the assault should come. 
Still another case is the attitude of both Germany and 
Austria towards the sale of war munitions, trying by 
the flimsiest arguments imaginable to persuade this 
government to stop such sales to the Allies, and at the 
same time avoiding with the most scrupulous care any 
statement by which they themselves would have been 
bound not to purchase munitions wherever they could, 
if at any time they should get access to the seas. And 
more recently comes the plea to us to insist that Eng- 
lish merchant vessels shall not carry defensive guns of 
calibre large enough to destroy a submarine, on the 
ground that this transforms them into vessels of ofifense! 
And this from the country that is even yet reiterating 
to weary ears the statement that the inroads into Bel- 
gium and France with which the war was opened were 
purely defensive! The mission of Bernhard Dernburg 
to this country is another illustration, a man contempt- 
uous enough of American intelligence to attempt to 
persuade a public audience in a great American city 
that the slaughter of over a hundred of our citizens on 
the Lusitania, as a mere incident of war against Eng- 
land, was entirely justifiable. And it was Ambassador 
BernstorfT who tried to quiet American resentment at 
the dropping of bombs from Zeppelins among the 
women and children of Antwerp with the published 
statement that Antwerp is a fortified city and that the 
civilian population should have left before the attack, 
as if the evacuation of a city of several hundred thou- 
sands of inhabitants in so short a time were even a 

26 



human possibility. Why all these insults to ordinary 
human intelligence, unless it' be true that the country 
from which they emanate has become so inordinately 
proud of its peculiar "kultur" as actually to suppose 
that no other type of civilization is really worthy of 
respect? In this connection it is interesting to note that 
one of the great German papers, the Hamburger Nach- 
richten, has just recently declared that the German 
race, now estimated at 100,000,000 both at home and 
abroad, are destined to "reorganize" the whole world 
on the German model. Can there be any surprise out- 
side of Germany itself that the dominant world senti- 
ment desires the defeat of a power possessing so little 
appreciation of the rights, the feelings and the civiliza- 
tion of others? No nation on earth can assume that 
attitude and retain or deserve the respect of the world 
at large. It is the "hubris" of the old Greeks, that 
wanton insolence of temper upon which the fates can- 
not fail to bring a fitting penalty. 

X. Misguided German-American Sentiment 
The development of German-American opinion in 
this country has been a tragedy of unwise and disloyal 
leadership, the acme of unwisdom for the German- 
Americans themselves and disloyal not only to the land 
of their adoption but also to the only kind of interests 
of their former home which they, as citizens under oath 
of allegiance to this country, have any right to promote. 
I do not mean by this to express the belief that in the 
event of war between the two countries the great ma- 
jority of our German-American citizens would not give 
their aid at once to the land of their adoption; but the 
bad seed sown by such men as Hexamer and Viereck 
would inevitably lead many to their ruin. One of the 
most disturbing features of the situation is the apparent 
policy of the German government itself to retain a hold 
upon its former subjects who have taken the oath of 
allegiance to us. This is an intolerable situation, and 
is bound to receive the most serious attention after the 
war is over. It ought to be apparent without argument 

27 



that if any foreign nation persists in an attempt to keep 
its hand upon duly admitted citizens of this country we 
could not in safety continue to extend the right of 
naturalization to its subjects, and might conceivably be 
forced to withdraw it even from those to whom it had 
already been given. 

True wisdom would have led German- Americans 
wholly to the American side in the matters which have 
produced friction between the two countries. They are 
far enough removed from the center of the war to see 
that Germany has absolutely nothing to gain from the 
features of her warfare to which we have objected. The 
use of her submarines as commerce destroyers in a man- 
ner outside the pale of law and contrary to the dictates 
of modern humane feeling has not brought her armies 
one mile nearer to their goal on any front; it has not 
prevented the introduction of unprecedented quanti- 
ties of supplies of all kinds into the ports of the Allies; 
it has not destroyed an amount of Allied tonnage any- 
where near equal to the new that has been launchecf 
during the same period, and has not made it possible 
for her own navy to appear upon the open seas. And 
what has it done? It has destroyed a number of vessels 
of no material consequence in comparison to those that 
have passed unscathed; it has sunk an amount of food 
and ammunition wholly negligible in comparison with 
that which it has been unable to touch; and this paltry 
task it has accomplished at the cost of strengthening all 
over the world the feeling that the domination of 
Prussian militarism over Europe through success in the 
present war would be an enormous world disaster. 
Genuine American sentiment could of course have no 
sympathy with such a policy, and if German-Ameri- 
cans had shown themselves wholly Americans on this 
point the policy of Germany towards America might 
have been greatly altered. This might not have brought 
Germany appreciably nearer to success in the war, but 
it would have had no appreciable influence towards 
her failure, and would unquestionably have saved her 
from much of the world-wide ill-feeling which is des- 
tined so seriously to retard her recovery 



XL Two Kinds of Efficiency 

Efficiency! The word has a taking sound for these 
latter days, but after all it is strictly a matter of its ap- 
plication. We like the *'men who do things" as a rule, 
but if the things in question ought not to be done, the 
man who resists may after all be accomplishing more 
for humanity and progress. The efficiency that con- 
serves the forests, the fertilizing materials, the mineral 
resources and the food products of Germany more ef- 
fectively than is done in most other countries, is good 
in itself and may well give a lesson to the world out- 
side. But it is an essentially material blessing after all, 
and like other material blessings may easily be trans- 
formed into a curse. And this is just what has hap- 
pened to the Germany of today. United into a great 
empire, physically enriched with the fruits of indus- 
trial efficiency, the German people have listened too 
willingly to the seductive teachings of men who have 
seen in this efficiency a promising pathway to world 
dominion. Hence German efficiency has been bent 
predominantly to the task of preparing for such domin- 
ion, and a military machine has been built up which 
may readily be admitted to surpass anything of the kind 
that the world has ever seen. If the "efficient" work 
of that machine during the past twenty months, — its 
rape of Belgium, its toll of submarine murders, its 
mangled bodies of women and children slaughtered by 
Zeppelin bombs from the air, its smoking ruins of his- 
toric monuments of art, science, philanthropy and re- 
ligion — if all this could have been definitely held up 
to the German masses as a deliberate programme of ac- 
tion twenty years ago, they would have recoiled from 
it with horror and consigned its proposers to lasting 
infamy. But little by little, only vaguely or not at all 
conscious of the direction in which they were led, they 
have been brought to the point where humaner feelings 
and higher ideals could be submerged, and where it 
has been possible to secure their plaudits for such uses 
of their "efficiency" as have shocked and dismayed the 

29 



civilized world outside their own boundaries. To 
those who view the matter from without, the ruins of 
churches, of hospitals, of the Louvain Library, and 
other places and objects held sacred from the ravages 
of war by all right-thinking men, picture not so vividly 
the crushing outward power of German "efficiency" as 
its blighting inward devastation of the noblest traits of 
the German spirit itself, when actuated by ideals out 
of harmony with the upward trend of liberty and 
humanity. 

But modern times have seen the birth of another 
type of efficiency, and that is the efficiency of an in- 
formed and inspired public opinion. Before its forces 
many an evil has already fallen and more are destined 
to fall in years to come. And before this higher effi- 
ciency the mechanical efficiency of the German war 
machine is doomed to fall. It is because the Allies 
have a cause which appeals to the sound moral judg- 
ment of all their own right-thinking men that 
France and England and Russia, all more or 
less distracted by local differences when the war 
began, have been able to put aside all else and settle 
down to the present task with an unbroken determina- 
tion to bring it to a successful end and an unwavering 
belief that no other outcome is possible. And the 
knowledge that this belief in the moral soundness of 
their cause is shared by the dominant opinion of the 
neutral world has been worth more to them on the 
actual field of battle than a million additional men 
could have been, had world opinion been adverse. 

And the moral gain to those who firmly hold sound 
moral opinion in such a crisis is great. It is difficult, 
however, to keep a firm grip upon a moral opinion 
which one does not take the trouble on due occasions 
to express. I cannot but believe that this country would 
have been greatly the gainer, morally, by an official ex- 
pression, prompt and emphatic, of its condemnation 
of the violation of the neutrality of Belgium. Such an 
expression could not honestly have been construed as 

30 



inconsistent with our own neutrality in the European 
war, for that violation in its very nature transcended 
the limits of that war and constituted a serious threat to 
the interests of every nation on earth concerned for the 
validity of international engagements. The lack of 
some such centralized expression has been in part re- 
sponsible for an apparent languishing of interest which 
has led Germany and perhaps other lands into a mis- 
conception as to what the fundamental American opin- 
ion really is. In the same editorial of the Independent 
from which quotation was made on the first page, the 
editor goes on to say: "Today, it is obvious to every- 
body that public opinion in the United States verges 
upon a state of intellectual and moral anarchy." When 
those words were written, men prominent in Congress 
were beginning to talk about the probability that a 
resolution would be passed warning American citizens 
not to exercise their traditional right to take passage on 
merchant vessels of belligerent owner-ship, thus over- 
ruling the President in the contest with Germany begun 
by the lawless slaughter of Americans on the Lusitania, 
and openly surrendering to German threats one of the 
hard won principles of modern liberty and humanity. 
Resolutions specifically making that base surrender 
were introduced into both House and Senate, and offi- 
cial Germany was becoming convinced that the pro- 
German propaganda, assiduously pushed through so 
many channels both on the surface and under the sur- 
face, had definitely placed Congress on the pro-German 
side, rendering the President powerless to defend the 
rights which he was interested in destroying. That so 
many congressmen gave plausibility to that view will 
go down in history as one of the most disgraceful epi- 
sodes in the annals of the American Congress. But 
neither the fear of German-American votes nor the 
still more forbidding influences which were at work 
had altered genuine American opinion. By the Presi- 
dent's demand that Congress should specifically declare 
itself and no longer paralyze his arm by vague talk of 

81 



division, and especially by his ringing open letter to 
Senator Stone, American sentiment was once more 
awakened and made vocal, and the world was permitted 
to see just how little honest backing lay behind the 
cowardly proposals of betrayal which Senator Gore 
and Congressman McLemore had foolishly fathered. 
The incident as a whole perhaps did some good, in 
showing the ugly nature of some of the influences at 
work upon our congressmen and the defective char- 
acter of some of the material which we have exposed 
to such influences, -through lack of discrimination in 
our congressional elections. But it is an incident such 
as we cannot afford to see repeated. The true Ameri- 
can sentiment must be kept alive and active, not only 
to guard our interests immediately imperilled, but to 
do our part towards human progress when the war shall 
end, as it will end, in Germany's defeat. International 
law needs some rewriting — Germany is correct so far — 
but a rewriting such as shall put every possible human 
safeguard in the way of a repetition of the violation of 
a neutral state because it is physically weak; a rewrit- 
ing which shall more firmly secure, not annul, all ex- 
isting protection to the lives of travelers on the high 
seas in time of war; a rewriting which shall subject 
every new death-dealing invention of warfare, such as 
the Zeppelin and the submarine, to all restrictions here- 
tofore devised in the interest of humanity, and still 
more where possible. It is to its normal part in this 
task that American opinion, in harmony with the best 
opinion throughout the world, must be led. And the 
suicide of a German "efficiency" prostituted to the ends 
of Prussian militarism will be followed by the birth of 
a new Germany just as eager to see those changes as is 
the rest of the world. It is in that direction alone that 
material can be found with which to lay the founda- 
tions of a durable and endurable peace. The "peace" 
to which Mr. Bryan and his happily diminished fol- 
lowing would lead us, through cowardly surrender of 
principles of justice and liberty won in the age-long 
struggle of right against wrong, — such a peace, could 
be neither durable nor endurable. 



015 845 501 8 ^ 



The Chanaplin Press 
Columbus, Ohio 



